Posted on 06/08/2011 5:50:52 AM PDT by shibumi
When Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States in 1980, I was 32 years old. I was frustrated with my initial experiences in the world of business, not in small measure because of the previous four years of The Carter Malaise and the sense that my first hand experience of the political perfidy that pervaded the end of The VietNam War had somehow become part and parcel of American foreign policy and military strategy. To be a cog in the machine of the late 70’s economy was to be constantly in motion, always under pressure and sorely lacking in lubrication.
Within a few short years, my whole perspective changed. Ronald Reagan did not govern without error nor did he as one man embody the essence of good government. And I will never suggest that politicians should, or could, be the prime movers in the quest for prosperity. I do believe however that Ronald Reagan actualized one time-tested and proven economic principle. Government works best as a facilitator when it gets out of the way.
As life has gone on it’s blinding fast forward through the ensuing thirty odd years since Reagan’s election the American Culture has been reshaped and reformed either with legislation or through judicial fiat. Hundreds of new “rights” have emerged ensuring the free practice of every conceivable form of perversion, slothful lifestyle and pseudo-religious worship. Our nation has abided the deification of pop culture, thuggery, avarice, racism (so long as it’s not “white” racism) and that all important measure of well being and intelligence - “self esteem.”
Brushed aside in this frenzy to codify the profane as sacrosanct is the most fundamental freedom of all - the freedom to engage in honest commerce, unfettered. The engine of America is, and always has been, the small business. The guy who during the Reagan years could rest assured that the ominous burden of regulation and taxes, while maybe not shrinking, was at least having it’s hormonal growth spurt curtailed, now faces a monolith of bloated leech bureaucrats hell bent on micro managing the number of bathroom breaks his employees get. (And they better damn well be unisex handicapped accessible hypoallergenic bathrooms with minimal environmental impact, low water toilets and CFC light bulbs.) And that’s before he gets to deal with the federal agency designated to confiscate his profits and give them to those without the gumption to get off their dead butts and try to make fix or sell something. (Think Joe the Plumber being told by a then candidate that he should have his earnings “redistributed.”)
While the American small business entrepreneur can deal with a lot of flack thrown his way there is a further dimension to the spirit of the times that is causing the “Malaise Redux” we are living through today. Part of the self image that is the “can do!” American exceptionalism which made US the economic powerhouse of the world for two centuries was the assurance of our military might. Scrupulously using our military only when provoked we maintained a world reputation for not only having a nation secure unto itself, but one which could be counted on by allies for the preservation of their own national identity and sovereignty.
The eighties saw the use of this power in stark contrast to the prolonged agony of the VietNam War. Our attacks on Grenada, Lybia and the various covert operations were specific, direct and successful. The combined might of our military buildup along with the strength of the revived economy brought the demise of the Soviet Bloc and the waning of the Communist sphere of influence.
The spirit of optimism and the underlying notion that there is actually a future worth building for shore up the confident risk taking that was the impetus of the small business based economic boom. Whatever the Liberal pundits may claim to the contrary, the fact is that this boom continued for years afterward despite the Clinton Administration’s best efforts to kill it.
We find ourselves now in a slump of epic proportions. Whether it is the “Communism sold by the drink” (P.J. O’Rourke’s description of Socialism) that is the favorite of the US Congress or the outright Communism favored by the Executive Branch’s Secretaries and Czars, “redistribution” is the name of the game. We are literally on the verge of being a nation where the only citizens who are legally entitled to any property or payments are those who did nothing to earn them.
The potential entrepreneur today not only sees the certainty that he will have to have extraordinary luck along with competence and skill to start and grow his business, but also that he will have to be even more skillful in trying to keep any of what he might be lucky and skillful enough to earn. That wheezing noise you hear is your economy gasping through a bureaucratically inflicted case of COPD.
More than anything else, the decisions coming our way in the next year and a half will be about giving real Americans room to breathe in both economic and personal freedom (for in truth, you can’t have one without the other) or whether we let the looters and their cohorts in social engineering regulate (both figuratively and literally) the very air.
The future is one which can again be the realization of the American Dream by a whole new generation of risk takers and job creators, or that future will see the further contraction of opportunity as those who could bring about that reality spend their creativity circumventing The State rather than expanding the horizon. The ingenuity spent on evading for survival is rarely recouped in the form of real production and economic progress.
The next few years will see yet another reaffirmation of that indomitable American Spirit which has asserted itself in generations past, or the creation of yet another (and perhaps final?) “Alphabet Generation” whose genius if frittered away mass producing the economic junk food of pop culture, purloined wealth and pernicious bureaucracy.
Ping
My sincere thanks to Jim Robinson and staff for providing the best forum on the internet for the free exchange of Conservative thought.
Insanely awesome post. In the name of “spreading the wealth around”, I’m ENTITLED to my “fair share” of your talent.
You are one gifted writer, to say the least. Bravismo!
Excellent. Most excellent.
Bravo! Well written and I could not agree with you more. I went through the same period of time on Active Duty, and believe me it was one hell of a lot better to be in Ronald Reagan’s Navy than it was to be in Jimmah’s...
Part of the problem we have today is that we constantly play to the lowest common denominator, to the point that we are becoming a Nation of lowest common denominators. Any kind of success is sneered at while we celebrate the most perverse “accomplishments” of people who are famous for being famous.
Another problem is that we have become far too tolerant of the fringe among us. A perfect example is the babe in Kallyfornea who is behind the effort to ban circumcision...who actually identifies herself as a “lactation expert”...apparently people actually pay her money to teach mothers how to nurse...but that’s a different rant...
Because people were shocked when they saw the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, we have dismantled most of the mental health facilities we used to have (instead of improving them) and transferred mental health care to the Communities, and made Police Officers the first point of contact for mental patients.
We tolerate the State putting convicted sex offenders in our communities, including those who are statistically most likely to re-offend, and then lament when yet another child is sexually assaulted and/or killed.
Vicious gangs are running many neighborhoods, and the violence they inflict on one another is treated as being more preferable to residents, as opposed to cooperating with the police to investigate, capture and incarcerate the worst offenders. We tolerate repeated drive-by shootings and dead teenagers in the street while self-appointed volunteers groups dog the police every step of the way and question their every motive and action, no matter what.
I don’t know where we are heading but it is not a good place, and I really do fear for the future of the Country if this nonsense continues for much longer.
Thank You.
:)
Actually, I’m a pretty good writer myself. You have to be a C programmer to understand it, though :)
At least I didn’t excerpt the lemons.
What everybody else said, and thanks for the ping.
This is the fine art of truth, shibumi. I have watched for years as gaming the system becomes hard work, a regular full time job. Yet they think they are getting something for nothing and that is their only goal. They don’t even raalize how hard they have to work for it, how much privacy they give up, and worst of all, they take perverse pride in how much of your money they can steal and call it getting even.
Never understood it and understand it less today.
When I reflect on the 1980s, I think of all the policy measures and political currents of the Reagan years that helped to facilitate the strong economic growth of the next 15+ years. Items of note include: (1) tax reform, (2) deregulation of the telecommunications industry and various elements of the nation's transportation system (the airline trucking and railroad industries in particular), and (3) an unbridled sense of forward-looking optimism in so many aspects of life.
Contrast that with what we've seen since the late 1990s, where so much of the "energy" for that growth dissipated and was replaced by an ongoing shell-game involving illusory growth and con artists in all walks of life.
Well said and well done, my FRiend.
I sometimes find myself wondering if we are just in some Dark Ages period of US history or if this is the end.
The optimist in me says we can still correct this and perhaps it’s taking these Dark Ages to spur us back to the light.
Outstanding, dear shibumi! Thank you!
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